Adora O, Head of Security Operations, Manila

Life at Cambridge

What I enjoy most about working here are the people, the culture, and the work-life balance. Cambridge has also given me the opportunity to really grow professionally. At the time I first joined, there was no central security team. I came on board with the understanding that I would be the person to develop the function.

The work began by maximising the use of the security tools we already had. From there, we built an understanding of how the security set-up could mature in daily use. My team protect the organisation’s workstations from viruses, malware and ransomware. There is always someone continuously monitoring our logs to maintain this endpoint protection. More recently, we have started to evolve beyond endpoint security to take on a wide scope of responsibility for protecting not just our colleagues, but also the organisation as a whole and our reputation.

Your ideas and inputs are heard and valued by senior management within Technology. One of the initiatives I am most proud of working on in IT security is what we call the skills booster programme for our new starters. In their first 30 days of joining us, everyone completes a security course that kickstarts their knowledge and their understanding of the language we commonly use in the security operation. This has been very successful because the whole team speaks in a technical language that everyone understands - there is common ground to work from.

Career development is one of the strongest reasons to join Cambridge University Press & Assessment. I have gained two new certifications in my time here. I am fortunate to have a manager who really encouraged me to achieve them. I just recently gained a very difficult certification for security, called CISSP. Everything was funded and supported by Cambridge. I was also given the time to study and prepare properly for the certification, which demonstrates the emphasis on work-life balance here.